A web-fed, offset printing press in use to print a newspaper. The plate cylinder, visible at bottom with ink, contains the image in positive form and transfers it to an offset cylinder that then deposits the ink on the page. By Tom T, via Wikimedia Commons

UNITED STATES: Warriors with a difference, Helena Independent Record – Today is Chinese New Year, an appropriate time to begin the week’s briefs with a story about a Chinese artist. Wanxin Zhang builds life-size sculptures of humans with “the coil and slab method from the ground up, hollowing out the clay, cutting the piece into sections, firing the sections multiple times and then gluing them back together.” He has created his own terracotta warriors, however, they are not what you’d expect. Take a look…

ENGLAND: Julia Carter Preston obituary, The Guardian – This is a beautiful and moving tribute to a talented woman who left quite a legacy. She “single-mindedly revived the art of sgraffito...”

MEXICO: 1,300 Year Old Kiln Used by Ancient Zapotecs Discovered in Mexico, Hispanically Speaking News – Found in an archaeological zone in Oaxaca, the kiln is a “link between the pre-Columbian pottery tradition and the artisanal ceramics currently made in the community of Santa Maria Atzompa, establishing the connection between today’s inhabitants and their ancestors.”

UNITED STATES: We need to recognize the folk art talent in our own backyard, Barrow Journal – This is a sweet little story. It’s a love story, in a way, a love story about a community, a locale. in it, reporter Mike Buffington writes about artisans in northeastern Georgia, where he lives. He writes about them person by person, town by town, and county by county. About halfway through the story, he begins talking about the people who make traditional pottery. It’s worth a read; take a boo…